Homes to be visited for living conditions survey

Statistics SA will begin visiting homes across the country next week to collect data for its 2014/15 Living Conditions Survey (LCS), it said on Wednesday.

“Data collectors will visit households throughout the country to collect data from household members through a questionnaire,” it said in a statement.

“The LCS data is used to monitor and profile the poverty levels in the country and also provides the necessary data to inform the development and maintenance of household national accounts and monitor inequality.”

Data collection would start on October 13 and would end in October next year.

The survey collects detailed income and expenditure data, as well as information on education, housing, social welfare, health and living circumstances from households across South Africa.

The LCS is conducted once every five years and the last survey was held in 2008.

StatsSA previously said the survey was supposed to have been held in 2013, but was moved to 2014 because of a lack of funding.

Around 32,000 households across the country had been selected to participate in the survey.

“A survey officer will visit households once a week for four weeks to complete the questionnaire,” StatsSA said.

“Each visit will last roughly 30 minutes. Households will also be asked to keep a weekly diary of expenses for two weeks.

“During any one of the four visits, all members of the household will be measured and weighed. This is done so that a person’s nutritional status can be determined.”

The survey would profile poverty and inequality to help the country’s goals in reducing the Gini coefficient, currently at 0.69.

The coefficient is a number between zero (perfect equality) and one (perfect inequality).

The National Development Plan aimed to reduce the coefficient to 0.60 by 2030.

The survey would allow StatsSA to reassess the consumer price index basket of goods and services.